Birth Control

In 1957, when the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the first birth-control pills, it wasn't for birth control. The contraceptives won approval as a treatment for severe menstrual disorders; temporary infertility was a side effect. Funny, women across the country suddenly started complaining in droves about severe menstrual disorders. As religiously-affiliated organizations, such as Catholic hospitals and universities, continue to complain about federal policies that would require that health insurance cover family planning (President Obama worked out a compromise deal under which the insurance companies would absorb the cost, but the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops still sees this as undue interference)

Among the various provisions of the Affordable Care Act, few are as controversial as the one requiring health insurance providers to include coverage for contraception. A new survey finds that support for this rule is widespread, with 69% of Americans in favor of the mandate. Among 2,124 adults surveyed in November 2013, 1,452 agreed that “health plans in the United States should be required to include coverage” for “birth control medications,” according to a research letter published online Tuesday in the Journal of the American Medical Assn.

Re "New plan for birth-control coverage," Feb. 2 If men want to make it difficult for women to prevent pregnancy, it's only fair that they make it difficult for men to cause it. One could hope the men of Roman Catholic or Republican persuasion would strive for equality and insist that Viagra and similar medications be treated the same as they want contraceptives treated - that is, not covered by insurance. Tom Egan Costa Mesa ALSO: Letters: Keep on dancing Letters: Jail isn't for the mentally ill Letters: The GOP's sudden conversion

The Philippine Supreme Court on Tuesday upheld a law guaranteeing access to birth control and sex education in a country that has high maternal mortality and ranks 53rd worldwide in total fertility rate. Implementation of the Responsible Parenthood and Reproductive Health Act, also known as the RH Law, had been on hold for the last year following challenges to it by the Roman Catholic Church and conservative politicians who questioned the...

In 1984, Mario Cuomo pioneered the argument that one may be "personally opposed" to abortion while supporting abortion rights. Ever since, this convenient locution has become a staple for countless Democratic politicians, particularly Roman Catholic ones. Cuomo's argument was a mess. For instance, in order to buttress his argument he touted the (alleged) refusal of American Catholic bishops to forcefully denounce slavery. The bishops "weren't hypocrites; they were realists," Cuomo explained.

Using hormonally based birth control nearly doubles the risk an uninfected woman will contract HIV or that an infected woman will transmit the virus to her partner, researchers said Wednesday. Researchers had suspected such a link in the past, but the new study in Africa is the first to confirm their suspicions. Dr. Renee Heffron of the University of Washington and her colleagues studied nearly 2,500 HIV-positive women in seven African countries -- Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Botswana, Zambia, Tanzania and South Africa -- from 2004 to 2010.

Leave it to the brilliant Malcolm Potts to explain why the Little Sisters of the Poor, the Colorado nuns who recently won an interim U.S. Supreme Court victory , are hurting themselves, not just their female employees, by claiming that they should be exempt from offering contraceptive coverage with their healthcare benefits. Potts, a UC Berkeley public health professor who is an obstetrician and embryologist, is a celebrity in international reproductive health circles. For decades he has pioneered advances in women's reproductive health, particularly in the developing world.

WASHINGTON - Obama administration lawyers strongly urged Justice Sonia Sotomayor and her fellow Supreme Court members to drop an appeal from the Little Sisters of the Poor and other Catholic groups who object to the so-called contraceptive mandate in the new healthcare law. Nonprofit religious charities already can opt out of the requirement to pay for insurance coverage for contraceptives and therefore have nothing to complain about, U.S. Solicitor...

WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court on Tuesday agreed to hear another legal challenge to President Obama's healthcare law, this time to decide whether a corporation can refuse to pay to cover birth control drugs that violate the religious beliefs of the firm's owners. At issue is a growing clash between some Christian employers who object to some contraceptives they consider “abortion-inducing” and potentially millions of female workers who can benefit from free birth control. The case also calls on the court to decide whether corporations have religious rights similar to the free-speech rights that were upheld in the Citizens United decision in 2010.

WASHINGTON - The Obama administration set the stage Thursday for another Supreme Court showdown on the president's healthcare law, this time to decide whether for-profit companies can be forced to provide full contraceptive coverage for their employees despite religious objections from their owners. The administration's lawyers asked the justices to take up the issue this fall to decide whether these corporations can claim a religious exemption to this part of the healthcare law. U.S. Solicitor Gen. Donald Verrilli Jr. called the issue one of "exceptional importance" that needs to be resolved soon.

The Obama administration, trying to defuse one of the most contentious issues in its healthcare law, proposed Friday a new way to shield religiously affiliated organizations, such as hospitals and universities, from having to provide contraceptive coverage directly to their employees. Instead, the employees would obtain coverage through a separate, private insurance policy at no cost. The proposed rule also reaffirms that churches and other houses of worship themselves are exempt from the contraceptive mandate in Obama's healthcare overhaul, and makes it easier for institutions to show that they qualify for the exemption.

A self-described "loud-mouthed Irish priest" ("And may they carve it on my gravestone!" he once quipped), the Rev. Andrew M. Greeley rejected a conventional definition of his vocation. Denied a parish, the Roman Catholic priest created his own pulpits as a sociologist whose groundbreaking research corrected misimpressions of American Roman Catholics and as a bestselling novelist whose works - "The Cardinal Sins," "Thy Brother's Wife" and more than 50 other titles - made readers blush and church superiors fume.

In the uproar about making the morning-after contraceptive known as Plan B available to our daughters, there has been no similar outcry about condoms and our sons. Anyone of any age can walk into a drugstore - as well as most grocery and big-box stores - and buy condoms. If you want to remain anonymous, you can pay cash; no ID is required. If you're too embarrassed to face the checkout clerk, use the self-check aisle or, for $17.97, get a box of 100 - flavored or with "added sensations," even - delivered to your door in a plain brown box. President Obama has suggested that restrictions on making Plan B available to younger girls are justifiable because we can't be confident that a younger girl in a drugstore "should be able - alongside bubble gum or batteries … to buy a medication that potentially, if not used properly, could end up having an adverse effect.